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Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam
- whoisjuan 5y agoIn LinkedIn I have my first name as my first name + middle initial. I always know when is a mass message or a real personalized message based on whether or not they include that initial. Works surprisingly well for me but sadly for LinkedIn that’s a case of an implementation detail totally destroying their value proposition for recruiters.
- notimetorelax 5y agoSome recruiters may think that you want your initial to be included. I’ve seen multiple posts talking about purposefully ignoring communication when there are small spelling mistakes in their names. Missing a whole initial may be one of those red flags for some.
- pandaman 5y agoIn the US, at least, the 99% of spam templates are using just the first name so you get "Hi, George W.! I am impressed with your work at Arbusto Energy, when can we hop on a quick call?"
- npteljes 5y agoThe issue, I think, is with false positives. If I were a recruiter, I'd pay attention to how someone would like to represent themselves, and that would include not altering the data they gave, so, I'd basically copy-paste the info from the First name field, and act like it's natural to call you that. Of course if you still find satisfying work with good pay, then your system works well. But I'd like better accuracy in, say, an email spam solution.
- thetest3r 5y agoInstead of an initial, I'd recommend putting an emoji in the first name. (And putting your last name as your full name). I've been able to filter out most "InMail/auto" when they say something along the lines of "Hi {emoji}." I learned of it here: https://www.glennstovall.com/the-wolf-test/ https://www.glennstovall.com/the-wolf-test/
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoA Chinese 囧 works great for emoji first names that will avoid emoji filtering on the other side.
- Tempest1981 5y agoI wonder if a Unicode RTL marker would work? (but what if your name is a palindrome) Or a non-breaking space?
- bradlys 5y agoI add an emoji to the front of my name. 90% of emails I get are clearly bots. Anyone who thinks there are majority real people behind these emails is a fool.
- andrewstuart 5y agoDeleted as too negative.
- dt3ft 5y agoMany recruiters don’t bother understanding what they were actually supposed to be doing. You can not be a tech recruiter if you do not understand the basics of the said tech. I get offers for jobs asa frontend eng, when I am a 100% backend guy. Recruiters need to understand that based on the very detailed information that they have about me. They clearly don’t care, so why should we care?
- hansel_der 5y ago> I get offers for jobs asa frontend eng, when I am a 100% backend guy. for you it might be the difference between "tire guy" and "engine guy" whereas the recruiter just sees a car mechanic.
- pandaman 5y agoThat's the point of the post you are replying to: don't be in business of hiring mechanics if you have no clue that there are "tire" and "engine" ones.
- hansel_der 5y agoi too find the "fullstack developer - printer problems" memes pretty funny but i can also sort of understand the other side and to return to the analogy, a tire-guy car-mechanic probably has a better chance to diagnose and fix your car than any bicycle-mechanic.
- pandaman 5y agoIt would be a good analogy if the recruiter spam also did not contain experience requirements: they are not just looking for somebody to fix their car, they want somebody with 10 years experience if Pirelli and 5 in Bridgestone and there will be a quiz where you will need to identify tires (there are just about 1500 of those) by patterns, Leet Road.
- arxanas 5y agoUpdate on this: since October 4, I've received an additional 17 emails, of which 5 generated useful discussion, and 2 out of those 5 had legitimately interesting opportunities. Also, despite having set up SPF and DKIM, LinkedIn continues to reject my reply emails.
- selfhoster11 5y agoTry changing your IP address if you're self hosting the email server. Maybe your IP range has been blackholed in its entirety.
- thrwyoilarticle 5y agoHosting your own email is hopeless. You need to pay for an email service like SES.
- jlund-molfese 5y agoThanks for writing the post! I thought it was interesting and deserved a second submission. I played around with hosting my own email server for a bit, but gave up. It’s too risky that an important email will get blocked because my server isn’t trusted.
- eatbitseveryday 5y agoSeems like overkill? Toying with recruiters or improving productivity by avoiding seeing the spam in the first place? I don’t get many so it doesn’t bother me…
- jason-phillips 5y ago> I don’t get many so it doesn’t bother me… Lucky you. I get 300+ emails per day and 15-30 phone calls. As a result, I created very aggressive email filters (hundreds of domains go straight to trash) and phone configuration (non-contacts go straight to voicemail and hundreds of numbers are blocked). Now I only see emails or calls from recruiters in the single-digits per day (and I add them to block lists too).
- guessmyname 5y agoI used to do something similar a couple of years ago, but ultimately, the bot replies became so short it made no sense to pay AWS to run the code. The last version of the code, which I kept running for over 6+ months, continued replying with things like “Thanks <Recruiter’s Name>. I’m interested.” —or— “Thanks <Recruiter’s Name>. I’m not interested, but I appreciate the invitation.” After comparing the success rate of my interviews with the length of my initial replies, I realized that short messages resulted in better leads. I dare to say that it never matters if the recruiter is targeting you specifically or bombarding a long list of potential employees. They only need to know if you are interested or not, so writing long emails to accept or decline their invitations is usually a waste of time, for you and for them. If you are interested, say so, and they will quickly set up a pre-screening call to tell you more about the company, the role, the team, compensation package, or whatever you want to know. If you are not interested, most recruiters will appreciate a simple “not interested. thanks.” and move on.
- ma2rten 5y agoActually when I wanted to change teams I cold emailed managers of other teams at my company. I found the same thing: a short 3 line emails have a great response rate. If you send a message that is too long, you just increase the barrier of responding.
- maaaaattttt 5y agoWhen I receive a long email/message I feel I also need to answer with a long reply, that it would be rude to answer with 2 lines to an initial 20/30 lines message. Maybe most people feel that way and when they receive a 3 lines initial message they feel confortable answering with 3 lines and they do it right away.
- notimetorelax 5y agoI’m assuming the original poster is not really looking for a new job, but is open to the opportunity if it comes with sufficient upside. So missing on a few opportunities may be an acceptable risk for them.
- ruuda 5y agoThere's a much simpler way to identify recruiter spam: put this in your profile: “Please include the word ‘banana’ in your message.”
- acatton 5y agoThis is indeed a very good technique. 3 years ago I left the python community and decided to stop doing Python. All my previous positions are Python dev positions. The first line of my profile is "I am NOT interested in any Python job". Since then I just filter out Python job positions, I know this recruiter didn't read my profile.
- DeathArrow 5y agoUsing Naive Bayes for text classification problems such as spam detection is fine for teaching purposes but: -it doesn't understand context -if the spammer uses related words, good luck catching those -false positives can be quite high As a recruiter receiving such a wonderful automated reply from you, I would ask you why didn't you use a more suited technique to the problem such as transformer-based attention network, or at least deep learning neural network.
- onemiketwelve 5y agoIf you got his automatic reply, you wouldn't know what architecture he used since he's not specifying in the email If he fixes the polish bug and grabbed more training emails from friends it would be even better than 95%. Which is why Bayes works well enough http://paulgraham.com/better.html http://paulgraham.com/better.html It's pretty clear he wanted something cheap and fast to implement and the headaches of getting a neutral net working aren't part of that formula. Honestly seeing how he cobbled together a lot of separate parts into something that works is pretty damn impressive and is exactly the type of thing that would fast track him if I was interviewing him
- rmbyrro 5y agoNot even Naive Bayes would be needed if recruiters would use a "more suited technique" to predict exactly who is going to be interested in a job and only bother emailing those.
- Tempest1981 5y agoOne recruiter was pestering me, and I was ignoring his emails... then he sent this which made me laugh: > I can do this all day - it's quite literally my job :) > > Really though, we are highly interested in your background ... > > Chat soon?
- aesyondu 5y agoWell? Did the recruiter's perseverance work or not?
- onemiketwelve 5y agoMy profile used to just say "Im a really bad engineer working with technology a, b and c. Also I steal" I don't think anybody cared about it and I always thought it was funny as shit Until one day a recruiter specifically called it out. His subject was "looking for really really bad engineer" Hey, we're looking for to hire someone who does technology A, who also had a penchant for larceny. Interested? That made me lmao and really respect the tenacity of that recruiter
- lapsis_beeftech 5y agoI advise my users to never reply to spam, doing so proves the address is valid and messages read which will encourage the spammers to send even more crap. I tried content filtering to deal with spam in the past but do not at all these days because false positives are not acceptable to me. If my mail server accepts a message it always gets delivered to a mailbox and never to /dev/null. The only effective way I have found of dealing with spam is to add the mail servers they use to relay their trash to an IP blacklist and reject future messages from those servers. That means some legitimate mail will bounce, but that is acceptable because those senders are notified of the delivery issue and can try to send again using a less shady service provider.
- nitred 5y agoI have a question for devs in Germany/Europe. Is it a violation of Datenschutz/GDPR if the recruiter sends a first email with a link to a video/website that tracks whether I clicked on it or not and then they send me a follow up email because they know I clicked on the link from the first email?
- JackMcMack 5y agoYou could argue that the recruiter has a legitimate interest in gauging your interest in their offer. This assumes of course that the recruiter is the one actually doing the tracking, and not sharing that data with anyone else. I highly recommend you exercise your rights and ask the company for your data. Is the privacy policy "complete" enough? Contact the DPO, ask them to explain what data they're gathering, why, and request a full dump.
- Adrox 5y agoJust clicking on a link (and them checking if you clicked), it's not Personal Information (logging your IP might be). Only if they asked you for your birthdate or something like that. Anyway, being Personal Information or not, you can always ask them to delete all the Data they have about you.
- circlingthesun 5y agoI have an emoji prefixed to my name on LinkedIn so whenever someone starts an email with: "Hi Rickert", I know it's an automated message.
- thrwyoilarticle 5y agoDid this have an emoji when you typed it?
- jlund-molfese 5y agoYeah, I think HN strips emoji For example, I’m including 5 below:
- mvc 5y agoI don't understand the attitute that most software engineers seem to have with recruiters. My early years as a software developer were in locations where opportunities were not like they are in your big tech centers. In those years, recruiters would get you a foot in the door and you were grateful for any opportunities that came. Even in big tech centers, until you build your own network, recruiters will likely be an important source of opportunities. It's ugly to see senior engineers' sneering attitute towards recruiters in front of their junior colleagues (at lunch or whatever). I'm not sure what they're trying to signal when they do that but to me it signals insecurity. Be kind to your recruiters. You never know what the future holds.
- chrisseaton 5y agoYeah it's a bit odd listening to people laugh about having to beat away Google etc recruiters with a stick.
- angryGhost 5y agogoogle have recruiters? surely they have enough people applying on a daily basis
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoI decided to do an interview with Google after being contacted by a recruiter, but I think I applied for something so it wasn’t a cold contact. Not getting me to apply, but getting me though the process to get a job offer. Google recruiters are also much better than those at Facebook, who were much less interested in getting candidates through.
- chrisseaton 5y agoYou can have people applying, but not the right people applying, so you get recruiters to go out there and persuade people to apply.
- azemetre 5y agoMany internal recruiters at companies also work in the HR department, typically they are also the first contact for perspective hires and usually are in sync with the hiring manager needs. Some recruiters do outreach and networking events (most common at feeder schools through job fairs or internships).
- ThePhysicist 5y agoHonestly, be grateful you receive so much recruiter "spam", sometimes great things can come from it. It's quite a HN thing to complain about receiving too many offers for jobs that are basically in the 99.9 % quantile of the highest paying jobs in the world.
- BlargMcLarg 5y agoAlmost every subpopulation complains about these practices, including people who aren't desired. This isn't a HN-exclusive thing as some here like to perpetuate. >Honestly, be grateful you receive so much recruiter "spam", sometimes great things can come from it. Great things can come from getting into an accident and landing in the hospital. Let's instead look at why people dislike these things and how to solve them, rather than recruitment proceeding to do the same thing people hate for another decade.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- NullPrefix 5y agoRecruiter spam and job offers are not the same thing
- gizdan 5y agoCounterpoint: half of those are based on bots, and thus when you reply, you're automatically ignored because your profile doesn't really fit. Counterpoint: I really don't want spam in my email. I've got LinkedIn for that. I get countless emails from recruiters because they use some tool that scrapes LinkedIn and guesses my email. Then I get "I have a role for you, pls respond", "Please hear me out, great role!", "Last try, I'll show nice things", and sometimes even then it doesn't stop. Personally I always yell at recruiters who directly reach out to me. I get many more LI messages from recruiters, but I can ignore those if I want, though quite often I reply and politely mention that I'm not interested. I've built good relationships with several recruiters who have reached out to me via LinkedIn, but never via email.
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
- Snetry 5y ago> If you would like to use my API endpoint, send me an email. Is this a pun? This might be a pun
- Hakashiro 5y agoHello, I read your blog post on detecting recruiter spam and we're impressed with your technical skills and would like to invite you to a 6-round interview graduate internship as a content writer :) :) :) :)
- ryanmercer 5y agoI clear international freight through customs, my job title is "Customs Trade Coordinator" at least once a week I'll get recruiter email or a LinkedIn message for mechanical engineering jobs. In the past few months I've also had emails along the lines of " I just came across your profile and was very impressed with your background and what a solid fit you appear to be for this role. " for: - Enterprise Architecture - Operations Manager - Director of Continuous Improvement - CI Engineer - Continuous Improvement Engineer And several others that I can't readily find in my gmail trash. Wut?
- thrwyoilarticle 5y agoHaving put up with being filtered by shoddy Applicant Tracking Systems, workers are now implementing their own Recruiter Tracking Systems - how poetic!
- evancoop 5y agoConsider the following: The majority of professionals in ANY field are mediocre at best, given the distribution of talent. Most developers aren't 10x folks. Most professional athletes aren't superstars. Most recruiters aren't insightful, matchmaking geniuses. In most cases, the market seems to work. In the case of developers, truly elite talent is not compensated anywhere near 10x (or 100x) the standard-issue rate (unless they become founders). Thus, there is a massive incentive to cast a wide net, and hope to land a big fish for whom circumstances have misaligned. For prospective employees, the best jobs are typically those one obtains through a network rather than a recruiter anyway - leading to a reluctance to engage, thus requiring a wider net. Bottom-line, a few elite recruiters can and do behave differently. A few elite developers can and do earn more, and for the rest of us mere mortals, this paradigm is probably the equilibrium. Curious if automating responses to automated emails would lead to ever larger/wider outreach?
- footlose_3815 5y agoMore often than not, real recruiters with real jobs bother me. I'm OK with this. The people who don't read my resume / tell me I'm a perfect fit for your entry level helpdesk role, I report and block.
- deeblering4 5y agoAnd the moral of the story is… don’t try to negotiate salary before the interview.
- Fnoord 5y agoThis article is pure FOMO. Spam rule #1: Do. Not. Reply. (Heck, don't read it either. My filters are usually good enough to not even see them.) If someone wants to genuinely contact you, it should be a personal message. Every time you give signal to spam, you contribute to it being worthwhile.
- stuckkeys 5y agoSounds like this thread got taken over by salty recruiters haha. Jk. Some of you guys are alright.